This topic comes up quite a lot on technology websites, but I generally try to steer clear from it as much as possible, since I'm not the one to talk about it (you know, with me being a man and all that), however, I feel it might be a good idea to just get my opinion out there and be done with it. The topic of women in IT is a hot-button issue, so let me just go out guns blazing: assuming women need special treatment, help, protection, and affirmative action is just as insulting and degrading as outright claiming women have no place in IT - maybe even more so.

To reinforce Thom's point, what if this were about race or religion? "I got this contract because I'm black", or "I got this contract because I'm Christian". Discrimination, no matter how well intentioned, is still discrimination.

Being from the US and hispanic I know a few things about discrimination, for racial discrimination there is the problem of ethnic peoples being 300 years behind in terms of economic and social status, there are no black or hispanic family dynasties in the US like there is with caucasian families, some of which can trace their family fortunes to land stolen from the native americans. Lets not forget about segregation, slavery, being counted as 3/5ths of a person, separate but equal, Jim Crow etc.

The reasons for these discrepancies, upbringing, education, integration or lack there of, even how education is funded here in the US all play a role. In a poor area the schools are heavily underfunded and under staffed because the schools are paid for via property taxes and certain political factions want noting more then to slash tax collections to cut school funding indirectly as well as cut education funding directly by putting in place a testing structure that causes the school to lose even more funding depending on the pass rate of their students, creating a cycle destined to fail.

Affirmative action like this is based on two false premises. First, the insipid one, the one that actually infuriates me to no end: affirmative action assumes that (in this case) women are less capable than men, and that they need special help, incentives, money, and regulations to achieve parity with their male counterparts. In other words, these laws actually advocate the very same idea they are trying to combat; namely, that women are less capable than men.

As to women, they still on average make only $0.77 on the dollar a man makes for the same amount of work, seniority, education etc. Upbrining also plays a large role here, we don't expect girls to be good at math and science. You see it in the toys and games designed for boys and girls, girls toys are baby dolls, barbies and tea sets, while toys for boys are much more engaging like Legos, weapons/G.I. Joes, and sporting goods. For games, girls get stuff like Nintendogs and barbie in princessland dressup while every other genera of game is targeted towards males.

We're expected to compete and problems solve, girls seem to be expected to be nothing more then cute.